End of the Year

So this is my belated last post of 2012. Over Christmas I worked on Enchanting Pegasus. Very pleased to have reached the right hand edge of the design so that I now know it fits onto the fabric in three directions! hopefully that means the bottom will fit on too. never quite trust that the fabric will be the right size in kits or that I wont make a mistake centering the design when I start. Will be putting this one away for a while so I can work on more HAEDs on a regular basis.
 

Over the last weekend I was working on Tinker, from the same set of kits as Monty the cat I finished a few moths back. Had about 100 stitches done in Tinker before this weekend and made good progress on the little cat in two days.

Border and Water

So since my last update on Pharaoh's Hound I've managed to finish the sky/moon and get to work on the border. The top is done and 1/4 of the sides, only have the remaining 3/4 to do before the finishing details get added and I'm done. I think this is 10 days worth of work since my last update. The border is full of fiddly little fractional stitches, they're worse than HAED confetti! They also seem to be charted full of mistakes - on the cover of the chart the 3rd glyph down is a different colour on the bottom than I have stitched it, only noticed after I was done and can't be bothered to correct it. Also the little chap 6 down has the wrong colour charted for his arms and legs, I think someone forgot to proofread the chart before it was published!

Worked again on The Wave at the weekend. Lots of water stitched this time. I have now reached the halfway point on the main part of the design, need to do the whole of the right side now and beach at the bottom and sky at the top of the left side now so that means I'm about just over 1/6 done in total.

Pegasus and Blue Moon

Well I think the title nicely sums up what I've been stitching this last week. I've made some nice progress on the sky on Enchanting Pegasus, think this update photo shows two weeks worth of work, but it's really coming along quite well. I think the clouds in this look really nice. My other piece has been the 2012 HAED SAL Blue Moon. I have been looking at the progress others have been making on this and they have all got so much done! Got quite a lot done myself the last two days because I finally got to work on a non confetti bit.

Pegasus September Etc

Update of the day number two. I have been working on my Pegasus again last week. Nice chunk of background done, lots of pretty colours. Some time consuming blending of colours. While I have manage to get a nice chunk done it has impressed on me just how much more I need to do on the background before the piece is complete, even with it being half cross it seems like it will take months and months to get it done.

I also did some more work on my Little China. Didn't get much done this weekend as was playing with horses Saturday and playing with weapons on Sunday. Did manage to get the eyes finished so it looks a lot less creepy now, and they're a really pretty colour.  

Sunlit Horses Finished

I have another finish this year. Go Me! Managed to get my Dimensions Gold Petite kit Sunlit Horses finished, evil back stitch, french knots and all. The back stitch took me a lot less time than I thought it would. Wish I could remember when I started it. Possibly March 2011, but that is as far back as my stitching calendar on my PC goes so might have been started before then. Would estimate it was 10 or 11 weeks work to complete. This finish means I get to reward myself with another new start. Horses again this time will reveal all in a future update.

Eternal Promise and More

It's a bumper crop of updates this week. First up is my Eternal Promise HAED, which has now been re-released as an even bigger chart. Quite upset about that  - If I had known they would eventually release it again wouldn't have paid out for the expensive original! Although on the plus side the old one is considerably smaller meaning I might actually finish it at some point. More work on the trees and I see lots more trees in my future for this one. It looks really pretty now but just appears to be a crazy mishmash of colours when stitching. As it's been a couple of weeks since my last update I have managed to work on another HAED. I have been working on Severeielle for about 3 weeks out of the past 18 months or so. She's big, 63 chart pages. Not sure about the  colours in it yet, they just don't look right all pinky colours where it looks like it should be greys but I'm hoping they will blend more as I stitch more. 

I also have two weekend projects to update, Little China and The Wave. Little China - the kitten's face is beginning to take shape now, might get some eyes soon. Just looks a little spooky at the moment. The Wave - it's been a wile since I updated this one, I've worked on it twice but still doesn't look to be much progress, mostly just more blue. Hope to get the main part of the left side done soon, then I'll be about 1/6 done on it. Yay! Double yay because I've managed to juggle this update and the farrier(who arrived halfway through writing), should really go out and see how he's doing... 

Body! And Legs!

Two projects this week, both of which I did not update after the last time I worked on them so this is two months progress not one. I should do this more often as it makes it look like I've done loads! First up is Enchanting Pegasus. Not only have I now managed to start and complete the main body but the legs as well. Even made a small start on the background. Most of what is left to do on this now is all half cross stitch so might come along a bit quicker now.

Second project of the week is SK Blue Moon, the HAED SAL piece. Another row completed this week. Odd mix of larger blocks of colour (on the right in the moon) and insane amounts of confetti (on the far left, by her arm). Not sure I could stand to work on the detail of this one for more than a couple of days, driving me a bit crazy!

So Close

Getting very close to finishing all of the half cross stitch on my Sunlit Horses now. I've worked on this one twice since the last update but didn't get a lot done during the first week. I did manage to get a lot done last Monday when my Lord of the Rings game was down for maintenance. I think I'd get a lot more stitching done if I didn't have my game to distract me! Pleased to be nearly done with he stitching, less pleased with the prospect of all that back stitch...

I also manage to work some more on my Call of the Unicorn. Still enjoying this chart more than my Mystic Stitch as it has normal symbols. So far everything on this chart has been very pink and purple - very bright colours without the kind of shading you'd get from a HAED. I'm hoping the shading will get better as I get onto the center of the design.  

A Finish!

Well it's only taken until July but I finally have my first finish of the year! My weekend project for this week was a banner from Dimensions  - Friends make life Purrfect, something I've been for at least a year and a half. Only had the back stitching to do this weekend - plus those dreaded french knots and a little bow. even managed to roughly finish it and attach it to the hanger that came with the kit.

Having completed my banner I worked on another UFO - Monty  from the Cats and Kittens series by Dimensions/Tootal Crafts British Collection. These kits are eBay purchases of mine - I've already completed two and have three more in waiting. The kits are old - from 1993 and the charts look hand drawn, some of the back stitch on this chart is really hard to see. Will be fun when I get round to doing that!

 Earlier in the week got to do some more work on Enchanting Pegasus, it's been a while since I updated this one so progress pictures are after about 3 months of not updating. Finally have the head and wings done, now for lots of larger chunks of colour in the body.

Fantasy Horses

Now after the excitement of my award back to cross stitch! This week is week number 3 working on Enchanting Pegasus. I don't feel like I've made much progress on Pegasus this week. Have done some more of the wing but not as much as I would have liked. Don't really have an excuse either. Uni assignments are in so that wasn't taking up my time. Maybe it's just been the nice weather outside distracting me! Think it will be a couple of months before I work on this one again, I was hoping to get all the full x done this year but it's starting to look unlikely now, although hopefuly the main body will stitch up faster as there a bigger blocks of colour.

My other project for this week has been a unicorn piece from Near North Treasures/Kustom Krafts called Call of the Unicorn. This is another one that I started a long time ago and had to re-start. When I started it first time round I started in the center. When I came to work on it again several years later I decided to work from the top left of page one. So I counted up and out from the middle and checked it several times. Happy that I was in the right place I started stitching. All was going well until I noticed that the tops of my new stitches were going in the opposite direction to the tops of my old stitches. So everything in the middle had to be frogged -  which took up about a day of stitching. Not much to actually see yet. I'm enjoying this one more than my Mystic Stitch from last week. The chart has proper symbols, although the colours do seem a bit odd - I think it could do with a few more to make the changes look more blended.

Sunlit Horses

Last week I was working on a small Dimensions kit called Sunlit Horses. Think I started this one about a year ago and have done about 7 weeks work on it now. I Didn't think I had done that long on it, must be a slower stitcher than I though.  Finally have all the full crosses done though so it's just the half crosses in the background to do now. Oh and all the dreaded backstitch, that always takes and age to get done.  Might even get it done by this time next year! This is quite nice and simple for a Dimensions kit - only one blended colour so far.

My other project for this week has been a Mystic Stitch Chart just called Cats. This one feels like it's been very slow going. Can't remember when I started it and have only been working on it at weekends so there is never much progress to see. Most of this so far has been DMC 939 and 823 with a few other colours thrown in here and there. This is my first Mystic Stitch chart and I don't enjoy it as much as my HAEDs not sure if it's the colours or the fabric on this one or just the way the charts only use letters rather than normal symbols. The letters just seem to make the chart harder to read for me - what's wrong with the normal symbols anyway?

 In other news actually had some nice weather in the last week. The last few days have been really nice. Wasn't as good at the start of the week but still managed to get out to a local zoo - Manor House Wildlife Park. They have a lemur walk-through with some very relaxed lemurs who were enjoying the nice weather. Our horses have also been enjoying the nicer weather.

Pegasus Week 2

So I'm back to working on Enchanting Pegasus again. Been working on the wing/mane and don't think I've made as much progress as I could have. It's a Dimensions kit and uses a lot of blended colours which seem to take an age to sort out. Really liking the colours in this one, but I think I'll enjoy it more when I get onto the bigger blocks of colour in the body/background.

My other project has been the HAED BB SAL Blue Moon. Have put in about 150 stitches over the weekend which was very disappointing. On the plus side my uni assignment is due in in 10 days so once that is gone I hope to have a bit more time. Also this weekend I lost a big chunk of time having to take a cat to the vet. He had a big patch of flesh exposed on one back leg where all the skin had come off. Luckily the skin had just peeled back so the vet was able to stitch him back together so he's now shut in the utility room to recover. He's one of our barn cats so not impressed at being shut in.   

Blue

I have been working on two projects again in the last week. The first is Pharaoh's Hound, a chart from Couchman Creations and the second is a Dimensions kit called The Wave. I started Pharaoh's Hound a year or so ago having already completed the companion piece Pharaoh's Pet. Took me a while to track down the Hound chart as Couchman Creations appear to have been out off business for a while now. I had to get the chart sent to me from Germany after contacting shops in both Australia and the USA. Didn't get as much done on Hound as I would have liked - think it was about 800 stitches which is pretty poor considering it was all one shade of blue.


The Wave is another re-start. I ordered the original kit from a shop years ago. I started it, did a little before realizing I had the fabric the wrong way. I restarted it then and then forgot about it. When I came to work on it again a while later I found I had lost a whole load of floss. I tried to match the Dimensions floss to DMC or Anchor with no luck so once again I put the kit away. Eventually I tracked down a cheap new kit of it on ebay and have started it again from there. One thing I have noticed is that the colours of some floss from the original and the new kit are quite different, which makes me worry what happens if you run out of a colour and ask Dimensions for more. Only stitched on The Wave for a couple of hours and I can't really tell how much I've done, I just know it was mostly blue.

In the last week I made more progress on my Enchanting Pegasus than I expected. Ended up making a few mistakes and throwing a load of floss away. This is probably a very bad thing because lots of Dimensions Gold Kits seem to run out of one or several colours before completion  even if you don't mess things up. I wonder why that is? They charge enough for the kit you'd think they could at least ensure there is sufficient threads to finish the project.

In other news I went to see friends at the weekend the two hour delay meant that the trip up was not the best but worse travel chaos was to meet me on my return. Snow. Last night was too snowy for my mum to give me a lift back from the station, which came as something as a surprise considering in Carmarthen it was poring down with rain. Mum booked my into a hotel so at least I had somewhere to stay but not the best thing to arrive home to. The road to our house managed to clear by morning but it's trying hard to snow again now.

Snowy view from my bedroom window

Looks like I forgot again!

So looks like I haven't published one of these in a while. During that time I managed to complete my Unicorn Valley QS and made some progress on the other HAEDs I was working on.

I'll post pictures of the other HAEDs as I work on them using my incredibly complicated rotation system I have in place. I have managed to start even more HAEDs as well as some non-HAED pieces. One of these new starts replaced Unicorn Valley and is my focus for the year. It's called Eternal Promise (a.k.a Arwen and Aragorn) by Matt Stewart and is now retired. 

Enchanting Pegasus 1 day in

Yesterday I started two new things. The first is a new Dimensions Gold Kit called Enchanting Pegasus. The other new thing is signing up to the Totally Useless Stitch A Long (TUSAL). It basically involves taking a picture of your ORT jar every month. An ORT jar is the jar you out cut off ends of threads and other stitching bits in. More info can be found here.   

TUSAL 23 Jan